Democrats Threaten Washington With Financial Questions
House Democrats are preparing to deploy the federal government’s most feared investigative weapon if they win the midterms: asking powerful people where the money went. Lawmakers and committee aides are considering hearings, subpoenas and document requests involving companies, contractors and financial firms in President Donald Trump’s political and business orbit. Impeachment would reportedly be considered only if investigators first uncovered evidence, reviving the discarded legal doctrine known as “checking.” The proposal represents a sharp break with Washington’s modern oversight system, under which Congress announces its conclusion first and schedules the facts for a later date.
The inquiry could examine Trump-linked investment vehicles, government contractors and deals involving foreign sovereign wealth funds, raising the dangerous possibility that billionaires may be expected to retain receipts. Constitutional scholars warned that the requirement could spread from Donald Trump Jr.’s investment partners to yacht owners, private-equity executives and eventually children operating lemonade stands without audited quarterly statements. Trump condemned the plan as an assault on the nation’s sacred tradition of presidential financial privacy. “These subpoenas are very nasty pieces of paper, and once Democrats start asking where money came from, nobody in America will be allowed to have money anymore,” Trump said, summarizing constitutional law through the lens of a casino cashier guarding the last stack of chips.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said Democrats remain focused on pocketbook issues while declining to rule out impeachment, prompting Republicans to clarify that Trump’s pocketbook is too large to qualify as a pocketbook issue. Examining whether public power enriched private interests, they explained, would amount to government interference in the private sector, particularly the private sector occupying government offices. A Democratic House could therefore subject Americans to months of televised testimony identifying which corporations purchased access, which officials benefited and whether any laws survived the transaction. Policy experts cautioned that releasing such information might cause voters to develop expectations, the leading precursor to accountability and other unauthorized uses of representative government. In Washington, asking where the money went is now the most dangerous abuse of power.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.